Cinema with a side of bacon

May 1, 2020 6:24 AM

I'm putting together a breakfast-themed film series for some friends, and I need your help thinking of movies for us to watch.

Sure, I have "The Breakfast Club" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" on the list, but I need more! These can be movies with "breakfast" in the title, movies where there's a big breakfast scene or where breakfast is an important plot point, OR they can somehow feature a traditional breakfast food (eggs, bacon, pancakes etc).

posted by Mender to Media & Arts (35 answers total)

Any movie with Kevin Bacon.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:46 AM on May 1, 2020 [19 favorites]

Pulp Fiction!
posted by shornco at 6:57 AM on May 1, 2020 [6 favorites]

Pulp Fiction has a couple of memorable breakfast scenes.
posted by mmascolino at 6:58 AM on May 1, 2020

Withnail and I has a (very) greasy fry-up as well as a couple of less memorable breakings of fasts.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:00 AM on May 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

Five Easy Pieces

Breakfast at Tiffany's
posted by tmdonahue at 7:05 AM on May 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's only the first few minutes of the movie,, but the Rube Goldberg-esque breakfast scene from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is pretty iconic.
posted by Ufez Jones at 7:07 AM on May 1, 2020 [12 favorites]

Reservoir Dogs begins with a breakfast scene. There are a couple of breakfasts in Kramer vs. Kramer and one, over and over again, in Groundhog Day. And the iconic image most of us have of Jimmy Cagney is him planting half a grapefruit on Mae Clarke’s face over breakfast in The Public Enemy.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:10 AM on May 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

Big Night. It's about the big dinner, but the simple breakfast at the end has you just as salivating.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:12 AM on May 1, 2020 [8 favorites]

Breakfast with Curtis (YT trailer)
posted by bricoleur at 7:20 AM on May 1, 2020

Shrek - make waffles!
posted by Sassyfras at 7:36 AM on May 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

(replying for a friend) - Scrambled Eggs, and the eggdel test.
posted by paduasoy at 7:47 AM on May 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

Fried Green Tomatoes?
posted by Melismata at 7:50 AM on May 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

Phantom Thread has at least one important, tension-filled breakfast scene, as the rules of the house are laid down. Also, did they meet at breakfast, where she was a waitress?
posted by Bron at 8:15 AM on May 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

Birds of Prey is essentially a love story about a girl and her breakfast sandwich.
posted by Stacey at 8:15 AM on May 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

Moonstruck culminates in a big breakfast scene. (Couple of great dinner scenes, too.)
posted by dnash at 8:18 AM on May 1, 2020 [9 favorites]

Elaborate breakfast machines:

Buster Keaton, The Scarecrow
(17 minute silent short)

Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers
posted by Pallas Athena at 8:24 AM on May 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

Citizen Kane
posted by bwonder2 at 8:31 AM on May 1, 2020

At the end of Woman of the Year, there's a great scene of Katharine Hepburn trying to make waffles and coffee and failing spectacularly.
posted by mefireader at 8:35 AM on May 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

Pancakes are alluded to twice in the movie The Notebook.
posted by Sassyfras at 8:39 AM on May 1, 2020

Christmas in Connecticut features Barbara Stanwyck trying to pretend like she can make pancakes (she's faking being a housewife for a magazine story). And Spanglish features the world's most beautiful egg sandwich; although it's a late-night snack, it's a marvel to behold!
posted by Otter_Handler at 8:39 AM on May 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Smoke Signals has a character who repeatedly talks about another character's dad buying him breakfast once, and what he had at that breakfast.
posted by bile and syntax at 8:48 AM on May 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

Little Women (2019, etc.), the Christmas breakfast they give away.

A Little Princess (1995), if you can handle a kids movie, has a great breakfast spread in an important scene.

Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring, the scene where Pippin talks about second breakfast.

Sixteen Candles has a scene with the grandmothers making breakfast (and one is smoking and almost dropping ash into the food).

Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (Dad almost eats the kids in his cereal).

Pleasantville (breakfast in black and white).
posted by gudrun at 8:59 AM on May 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

Brave Little Toaster!!!!
posted by JuliaIglesias at 9:01 AM on May 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

Thank you. Now I am watching The Big Night, free(ads), on Crackle.
posted by theora55 at 9:08 AM on May 1, 2020

A few more:

Pretty Woman: Richard Gere orders Julia Roberts the entire room service breakfast menu

This Is The End: Danny McBride cooks nearly all their food in an enthusiastically wasteful (and pivotal) breakfast scene. (Also this is exactly the kind of stupid yet hilarious disaster movie that’s been working for me during all this)

Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitters Dead: great kids making insane breakfast without parents scene
posted by JuliaIglesias at 9:13 AM on May 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

Wallace and Grommit's "The Wrong Trousers" has a fair bit of plot-pivotal breakfast. I'd guess Bagdad Cafe is likely, but it's been a very long time. If donuts count as breakfast, Twin Peaks and Tangerine? (Both are a bit darker than The Breakfast Club.) This is surprisingly hard.
posted by eotvos at 9:39 AM on May 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

The Darjeeling Limited has a sort of quirky breakfast thing. And i love the breakfast argument in Wedding Crashers.
posted by speakeasy at 10:09 AM on May 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Cool Hand Luke, if you consider 50 eggs breakfast.
posted by newmoistness at 10:18 AM on May 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

The move Spanglish, which I remember thinking was better than the (pretty terrible) reviews at the time, has a scene where Adam Sandler as a pro chef prepares himself a late-night egg sandwich (recipe linked) that looks absolutely mouthwatering. Apparently the sandwich was created by Thomas Keller.
posted by CiaoMela at 10:19 AM on May 1, 2020

And seconding Phantom Thread, it’s got some serious breakfast action.
posted by newmoistness at 10:24 AM on May 1, 2020

Canadian Bacon (John Candy) is on Prime.
posted by artdrectr at 10:36 AM on May 1, 2020

Can't remember off-hand, but surely at some point in Julie & Julia there must be a breakfast. Plus Amy Adams and Meryl Streep prepare all 524 recipes in Julia Childs' landmark cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (or at least as much as can fit into 123 minutes.)
posted by TrishaU at 2:04 PM on May 1, 2020

Bit of a stretch, but Runaway Bride has a whole bit where Julia Roberts has no idea what kind of eggs she likes because she always just eats whatever the guy she’s dating at the time eats but secretly hates them all. She ultimately tries all the egg preparations and finds ONE that she likes.
posted by Weeping_angel at 5:17 PM on May 1, 2020

Garden State has a totally surreal breakfast scene.

Knocked Up has a super-awkward post-hookup scene.
posted by j_curiouser at 5:54 PM on May 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

There's a confrontation over breakfast (foods) between hitmen played by John Cusack and Dan Aykroyd in Grosse Pointe Blank. It's not an overly central scene, but "that's not...*technically* an omelet..." is seared into my memory.
posted by pykrete jungle at 6:24 PM on May 1, 2020 [1 favorite]